The Only Café

by Linden MacIntyre

  “Oh, I hear you.”

  “Not coming?” Ethan said. He was frowning. They’d met up in the men’s room.

  Pierre had totally forgotten Brawley’s birthday party.

  “Something’s come up. Personal.”

  Ethan shrugged. “I’ll say you’re feeling feverish.”

  “Actually, that’ll be the truth.”

  He’d driven his new toy, a vintage Mustang, north to Bloor. He might have then turned west, toward home. But he’d turned east instead, crossed the Don Valley and entered what he’d always thought of as the city’s European microcosm, Danforth Avenue. He drove past the teeming patios, the Greek restaurants, Greek street signs, Greek statuary, Mediterranean enthusiasm. He drove slowly, absorbing all the images of pleasure. Too much pleasure. Too many thoughtless people. He could feel a headache starting.

  He drove until he entered another world. No more patios and pleasure-seeking throngs, no more shish kebab and booze. The signs were now in Urdu, the shops proclaiming halal meat. He drove until he saw the mosque, the unmistakable minaret, the silver crescent, the emerald domes.

  He parked the Mustang, locked it, stepped back, admired his car, felt his spirits lift but only for a moment. The car was a reminder of why he endured days like that day, a day of bad news, double-talk and spin. The car was a reward, like the boat he kept in Nova Scotia. Car and boat, vehicles for fantasy, for flight. But now he needed distance from his car, distance from his day. He needed to escape even his escapes.

  He started walking. And then he spotted the little bar with the peculiar name in this unlikely neighbourhood. He went in, ordered a beer. He sat trying to imagine what awaited him in the days to come. The patio was just outside and beyond it he could see the domes that made him feel at home.

  He’d spent maybe twenty minutes on the first beer, then he’d gone to the bar and fetched a second. Perhaps because he appeared to be out of place in his expensive suit and tie, a stranger came and gestured toward the empty seat across from him.

  Pierre nodded toward the chair. The stranger sat.

  “Have I seen you here before?”

  The agitation of the day was undiminished and he didn’t answer right away. But there was something about the stranger’s accent. Agitation was replaced by curiosity. “I doubt it.”

  The intruder said, “I’m Ari,” and held out a beefy hand. Pierre stared at it.

  Perhaps it was the face. Or maybe it was something deeper, a voiceprint in the memory. Or maybe it was just the similarity to another name that loomed large in memories Pierre had buried.

  Ari started to rise. “Sorry. I don’t mean to interrupt.” Pierre quickly grasped the hand. “It’s okay…sit…Harry?”

  “Ari. Short for Ariel.”

  “Pierre Cormier. I’ve never been here before. A bit different.”

  “Cormier? Yes. I find the atmosphere relaxing. Casual.”

  “Ari. Interesting name. Ari what?”

  “Roloff. An old Quebec name.”

  “But you aren’t French.”

  “True.” Ari shrugged, looked away briefly. “Nor are you,” he said. There was a trace of aggression in the look, the tone of voice.

  Pierre could feel the agitation creeping back as he studied the face before him. It was broad and smooth, fleshy, friendly, open, the eyes interested but weary. What a bizarre coincidence. He felt a flutter in his stomach. Ariel. The same name. There was even a bodily resemblance. The man in front of him was short and overweight, borderline obese. The hair, the colour of ash, was thinning at the front but effectively combed over.

  “You come here often?” he asked.

  Ari smiled, shrugged. “Maybe more often than I should.”

  “So how long have you been in this country?”

  Ari laughed. “Where do you think I’m from?” The subtle thickness of his consonants.

  “I know exactly where you’re from.”

  The smile was cautious now. Ari nodded.

  “You could say we were neighbours once,” Pierre said.

  “Ah. Neighbours north? South? East?”

  “North,” said Pierre.

  “Yes. Pierre? Yimkin kenna as-hab. Perhaps we were even friends.”

  “Perhaps. You speak like an Arab.”

  “Maybe not so much. I’ve been here five years,” Ari said. “You?”

  “Quite a bit longer.”

  “You’re from Beirut,” Ari said.

  “No. A bit south of there.”

  Ari hesitated. “Damour?”

  “You know Damour?”

  Ari nodded. “I’ve been there.”

  “I had family in Damour. But I was born in Saida.”

  “Ah. Sidon. But you had family in Damour?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to order a drink. Would you like another beer? Or something better.”

  “I’ll have what you’re having.”

  Ari returned with two glasses. Scotch.

  “And you? I’m going to guess Haifa.”

  “Why Haifa?”

  “Just a feeling. You’ve lived with Arabs.”

  “Yes. But not Haifa. A kibbutz near Hebron. You never heard of it.”

  “Probably not. I suppose you hear this a lot, but you bear a remarkable resemblance to someone famous.”

  Ari laughed. “I don’t hear it anymore so much. Someone no longer visible. Someone slowly being forgotten, yes?”

  “Forgotten here, maybe. But not so much in other places.”

  “When did you say you came?” asked Ari.

  “I didn’t say.”

  “And you’ve been back?”

  “No.”

  “Not once?”

  “I have nobody left there.”

  “You said you have family in Damour?”

  Pierre shook his head. “Past tense. You know the history.”

  “The important parts.” Ari reached across the table, clasped Pierre’s hand again, held it gently for a moment. “Such a tragedy, Damour. And all that followed.”

  Pierre stood abruptly, light-headed. “I think I have to leave now.” He took a quick mouthful of the Scotch. It was strong. “Thanks for the drink,” he said, setting the empty glass back down.

  Ari nodded and looked away.

  And that was how it started.

  Just like the old days he made a date with Lois for a Saturday. Hugging her goodbye as he left for work on Friday morning, he suggested it. “What do you say? Scaramouche?”

  She laughed. “Scaramouche? Is it still there?”

  “I’ll make sure,” he said.

  And, over dinner, he’d reassured her, about health, about work. How the trip to Indonesia (which was by no means certain yet) was mostly optics, a show of company support for Harrison, the manager who had managed to contain a hundred of these crises in the past. It was that kind of place and Harrison was that kind of guy, a veteran of projects in South Africa, Guatemala, Eritrea.

  “If I do go, it’ll be for a few days. That’s all.”

  She laughed. “Okay.” Sipped her wine, stared into space for a few moments. Caught his hand.

  “I don’t want to get into this right now but I want you to promise something. When you get back, if you go, I want us to get serious about you-know-what.”

  “I-know-what what?” He laughed, but of course he knew what. It had come up many times before.

  Lois worked from home. Her business was hospitality, organizing events and conferences for a small but well-heeled corporate clientele. It was employment that was completely compatible with motherhood.

  Pierre smiled and listened. And he nodded. And he verbally agreed. How could he not?

  Sunday morning he was at his desk at Draycor when the call came through from Indonesia. It was Harrison. He sounded calm but Pierre had an ear for reading stress. Under pressure and against his better judgment, Harrison had mentioned Brawley’s deadline, told the union guys that he was getting heat from Toronto but, more ominously, from l
ocal bureaucrats, including hardliners in the security forces, to sort this out. By Wednesday.

  “They walked out.”

  “Fuck,” Pierre said.

  “They blocked the maintenance crew this afternoon. Maybe you’d better get here as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  He called Brawley at his cottage. “It’s getting out of hand,” he told him, then, briefly, he explained what was happening. Brawley remained silent for a long time after Pierre had finished speaking. Pierre eventually asked, “Are you still there?”

  “I’m here,” Brawley replied wearily. “It’s your call, Pierre.”

  “I need some direction. Where do I go from here?”

  “Pierre, don’t bother me with questions. Bother me with information, yes. Anytime. But don’t ask stupid questions.” There was another silence. Then: “You know exactly where to go from here. This is the last time you’ll ask a question like that. Am I making myself clear?” The line went dead.

  Pierre was sweating, his hand shaking when he placed the call to Harrison. “Do what you have to do. But use restraint. Okay?”

  “I’ll do my best,” said Harrison. “But you should be here.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  But he just sat staring at the telephone, weak with nausea, the words boiling back from memory, from the worst days of his life: This is the last time you’re going to ask me a question like that, you know exactly what to do.

  He would love to have responded—I know exactly what to do, you bastard. Put a bullet between your fucking eyes. Words he should have said in 1982 but didn’t. And in his heart he knew he should have said them now.

  The doctors were unhappy. They could only offer an informed prognosis. The decisions were up to him. “You need treatment, preferably surgery,” the senior doctor told him sternly. “And it should be sooner rather than later.” There were two of them. One talkative, Pierre’s age, the other younger, silent.

  “We want to book you for an MRI.”

  “The timing is awkward to say the least,” Pierre said. “I have to go out of the country in a day or so. It’s rather urgent.”

  “I see. And for how long?”

  “It could be days or it could be weeks.”

  “We don’t want to overstate the urgency of your problem here, but timing is an issue. You understand metastasis…”

  “Yes. Yes. Look. I’ve been researching…”

  “You’ve been googling?” The doctors exchanged smiles.

  “…and there’s a link between prostate cancer and testosterone. I think we can gain time by…”

  “You’re referring to ADT, androgen deprivation therapy.”

  “Whatever it’s called. I’ve got testosterone, tons of it, right. Almost off the scale, I’m Lebanese.”

  “You have a high level…”

  “So what I want to do is bring it down, way down. To zero if I can. There’s medication, I understand.”

  “ADT is something we would only consider after primary therapy, surgery or rad—”

  “I don’t have time for primary therapy right now.”

  “In the circumstances, Mr. Cormier—”

  “In the circumstances this ADT stuff can slow things down and I have no choice but to try that.”

  The elder doctor sighed. He dropped his pen, picked it up, rolled it between thumb and forefinger. He studied Pierre for just a moment. “It’s your call, Mr. Cormier.”

  Pierre stood, picked up his briefcase, and left.

  The Wednesday deadline passed, but he felt uneasy, and on Thursday morning he told Lois, “I have to go. Tonight.”

  He booked his flight. He packed. He headed for the office.

  Ethan Kennedy was waiting for him outside his office door. “Harrison’s been trying to reach you. He’s on the phone right now. You’d better talk to him.”

  “Eight fucking people…dead? How? Who…? You must be mistaken. And women? Jesus Christ. You’re not telling me…”

  Harrison was quiet. “When can you get here?”

  “I’ll be on a plane tonight. I want every detail. If there’s video, I want every frame.”

  “I’ll have it ready for you.”

  He called Brawley. There was no answer so he left a message. We have a problem.

  He paced. He stopped, stared out over Lake Ontario. The sky was grey, contemplating snow. Eight people dead. Puncak would be in pitch darkness now but for the twinkle of light around the camp, the headframe, administration buildings. Midnight there.

  He kept a bottle of cognac in a cupboard. He fetched it, set it on his desk. He couldn’t find a glass. The coffee cup would do. He poured, then called Lois. He described the latest crisis.

  “Come back safe,” she said. “We have a life.”

  “The limbo is waiting,” he said.

  She laughed. “The what?”

  “The limo,” he said. “What did I say?”

  “Never mind,” she said. “Hurry back.”

  “Love you.”

  5.

  For the week that he’d been at the Puncak mine site he’d lived among the Western workers in the camp inside the fence. His room was simple, a single bed, a small writing table, faint scents of aftershave, disinfectant, stale cigarette smoke. A television set with clear reception. CNN. The BBC.

  Paddy Harrison gave him an office in the administration building where he had access to high-speed Internet, a sat phone and a machine for playing video recordings. Harrison’s assistant handed over banker’s boxes full of tapes and documents—contracts, transcripts, maps and property descriptions, both underground and surface.

  Harrison lived in an apartment set up to feel like home. He had a housekeeper and a cook, local people, and he invited Pierre to dinner on his first night there. There were drinks. Harrison impressed him, friendly, open, honest. They were about the same age. What had happened here at Puncak disgusted both of them. Eight people dead. For what, exactly?

  Harrison admitted that he was on the verge of quitting, starting out again from scratch. Maybe working for some non-profit, giving something back. But he had a daughter in her second year at Princeton and there was, of course, the burden of the family tradition. The Harrisons, as everybody knew, were mining pioneers, like Brawley.

  “So where did this all start?” Pierre asked.

  “It’s been brewing for a long time but I’ve heard a rumour, some incident involving miners. Something between the locals and the guys from Canada—we have quite a few here. I understand you’re from Nova Scotia.”

  “Yes,” Pierre replied.

  “We have a shift boss from Cape Breton. Top-of-the-line miners from there, as you’d know.”

  “Where in Cape Breton?”

  Harrison excused himself, then returned with a folder. “A place called…Mabou.”

  “I know the place.”

  “Sandy MacIsaac. Good man. Maybe if you have an in. They’re a pretty tight bunch. I’d be curious to know what they know.”

  “So, Paddy, tell me what you know,” Pierre said.

  On the day of the riot the tension had finally erupted in a confrontation with a truck. A large transport truck approached the security perimeter, moving slowly toward the gate; it was early morning, just after sunrise. Harrison remembered waking up to crowing roosters, then hearing angry voices; dressing quickly, driven by a kind of panic—knowing with uncanny clarity exactly how things he couldn’t see were unfolding and how they’d continue to unfold when he was in the middle of them.

  By the time he’d got outside someone had mounted the driver’s side of the truck, got the door open, dragged the driver out. The driver fell to the ground, wind knocked out of him. He couldn’t get up and was soon being kicked and beaten. The truck lurched forward, heading for the gate, picking up speed. A squad of security opened fire, but not before the truck rammed the gate. The hijacker at the wheel was killed instantly by the gunfire and the truck, now uncontrolled
, smashed through, coming to rest against the commissary.

  Everything after that was lost in chaos, facts buried in sensory impressions that in the aftermath fuelled contradictory accounts that were expressed with ever-escalating certainty and passion.

  Harrison led him through a file folder full of still photographs lifted from surveillance pictures shot from inside the fence in the days prior to the riot. One of the geologists, an amateur photographer, shot a video during the actual confrontation. It was hard to watch, Paddy warned him. Several photographs of a man called Ramos, believed to be the leader; one extreme blow-up of his hand and a dark object that Harrison believed might be a gun. The way he was holding it, standing, arm cocked as if he was about to throw something, Pierre was doubtful.

  “Maybe a grenade,” said Harrison.

  “More likely a rock or bottle.”

  “There have been arrests. I suppose they have ways of finding out who did what.”

  “Arrests?”

  “Several of the ringleaders are in custody.”

  “But not Ramos?”

  “Not yet. This one,” said Harrison, pointing to a pretty woman, “is Ramos’s girlfriend, or mistress. We think he has a family in Jakarta or somewhere.”

  “Where’s she?”

  “She’s in jail but we have no idea where he is.”

  “Maybe I should talk to her.”

  “Suit yourself but you’ll get nothing out of her. Just abuse and rhetoric.”

  “I suppose.”

  “I think we should leave the questioning to the experts. If anyone can get these people to talk, they can. Right?”

  “Well, we should stay on top of—”

  “Pierre, it isn’t just our call anymore. There are larger issues. Political issues.”

  “Fair enough. But let’s make it very clear to the local powers that they’ve fucked this thing up quite enough already.”

  The men in the Puncak cafeteria had been exceptional only for their unusually pale complexions, the pallor of men who work long shifts underground. One had a rucksack hooked over the back of his chair with a faded maple leaf stitched on it.